11.. 10.. 9.. 8..

My new house is filled with appliances that beep.  Sometimes it is impossible to know which one it is (usually something in the kitchen).  There is a nifty timer feature on the microwave that I use often, to time cooking things.  Since, after all, everything can be scheduled.  And its better than the oven timer which doesn't use "real time", but only time after it gets up to temperature.  Who has time for that?

But the microwave timer thing has no way of shutting it off.  I have tried pause (only a temporary thing, the countdown clock is still there), clear/off (nothing happens).  The only recourse is to watch it time down.  Kind of like those nuclear launch codes, once two people have triggered them it is unstoppable nuclear war.

I used to worry (seriously) about nuclear war back in the 80s.  But we survived.  Maybe even Reagan, enemy of the left, had a part in this.  But Russia doesn't really want to move on, though all those satellite countries are now EU or EU wanna bes.

Today the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, I suppose this is the most prestigious ballet on the planet, out of Russia, was brutally attacked.  He was a visionary who was not so content with doing Russian ballet the same way as it has always been done, but willing to be modern.  This was not the way to win friends and influence people.

So in the 80s we counted down the minutes to nuclear armageddon, with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  Today my microwave counts down unconsolably to zero.  The nuclear clock isn't even in the news anymore.  So apparently some countdowns are stoppable.

What is the green wire we can cut to stop our country from sinking into depair and recession?  I do not think it will be found by our Pres and his only style, which is community activism.  I do not thinkg it will be found by the opposing party on its own, since the Dems will never let it come to that, never willingly acquiesce to cuts in bloated social programs that keep many feeding at the trough.

Maybe this is one countdown that has to run to completion.  No easy way out, just a pause.  11.. 10.. 9.. 8..

My Siberian Umbrella

Rain streaks across the cracked windshield of my car streaming down I-5. Endless spring really summer but when its in the 40's at night its like a non-season.

I tried being a "true Oregonian" today and walking without an umbrella. Can't say I like it much. I prefer my trusty Siberian umbrella, which was left behind by a 7th grade Russian exchange student, literally from Siberia, back in the day (90's day). It is industrial strength and yet beautiful. I am convinced it will last forever and I haven't lost it yet which never happens to me.

Does rain falling naturally, without banging into a machine constructed around a (hybrid!) internal combustion engine, or seen by human eyes on cultivated straight furrows of crops, fall in a less linear pattern?

I was thinking about Russia today as my colleagues were bantering about the Gulf. Will it ever recover? This is not an "existential BP" issue only, as Interior Secretary Salazar has said. This is an issue for: fishermen whose livelihoods (and identities) are likely lost forever, a region known for seafood and hospitality, a nation that supposedly climbed out of the industrial revolution to the more evolved post-industrial society.

Well here we are, ravaging the Gulf as Russia ravaged its environment cranking out tanks during the Cold War.

And we won't even have any beautiful flowered umbrellas to show for it. Only dead shrimp and greasy pelicans.